On Thursday, Jun 21, 2007, at 02:21 America/Los_Angeles, Anthony Hind wrote:
[Rather a lot of interesting historical-phonetical-type stuff] In addition to looking to regional or temporal changes in pronunciation, or just plain "instability," to explain why Shakespeare rhymed "daughter" with "after" and "slaughter," there's also the possibility that the three words were consistently pronounced alike, like "love" and "move." Of course, these days (at least in the U.S.) "daughter" rhymes with "slaughter" and "after" rhymes with "laughter." Go figure. English spelling hasn't made sense since 1066. Shakespeare, of course, spelled his own name several different ways. This fact is Exhibit A cited by the somebody-other-than-Shakespeare-wrote-Shakespeare school, which must amuse Anthony to no end. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
